Unclassified problem on the 2008 Honda Accord
21 crashes 1 fire 20 injuries 42 of the 231 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.
Only 126 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.
When unclassified problem gets reported
Owners of the 2008 Honda Accord report unclassified problem at a median of 75,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 45,000 miles and a quarter after 105,000 miles, from 126 reports that carried an odometer reading.
It is the 66th most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 15,000 miles at the tenth percentile to 147,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 131,848 miles across the middle 80% of reports.
When the reports scatter this far, the mileage is telling you about how these cars were driven more than about the part itself.
19% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15,450 miles | 44,750 miles | 74,500 miles | 104,500 miles | 147,298 miles |
Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.
What a percentile can and cannot tell you here
These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.
What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.
Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.
What happens, and what it costs
Of these reports, 21 a crash, 1 a fire and 20 an injury are mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 27 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2020, at a median of 5,000 miles, and latest on the 2025 at 170,000 miles.
By volume the 2008 is the worst of them, which makes this a problem of this specific year rather than of the model as a whole.
If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
Vehicle passenger seat creaks and is not stable, lights on car continue to flicker and dim in and out when A/C and headlights are on. Very dangerous. Someone will think you are brightening them or stopping suddenly and will either cause a crash or road rage incident. Today eddie milan,general manager of sloane honda called me (can verify by cell phone bill) and "told me not to come back to sloane honda anymore" great attitude after multiple purchases and sending multiple customers. Honda refuses to admit they have problems>I will complain everyday that it gives me problems. I urge all consumers who have these problems to keep complaining until honda fixes this issue. Cars have problems. But flickering headlights and taillights are a danger. *tr
A month ago I had picked my boyfriend up from the airport and when he got out at a gas station he shut/slammed my front passenger door on my new 2008 honda accord. When this happened my side airbags on the passenger side deployed; both side window airbags and the side seat airbag. There was not enough impact for this to happen and no physical damage to the car. We were shocked by them deploying and counted our blessings no one was in that side of the car at that time. The car was in park and I was in the drivers seat. We have been fighting with honda for a month now and they refuse to fix it under my warranty. My insurance has been investigating this for a week and a half now and too strongly feel this is a warranty issue. No one has ever heard of this happening and now I am still stuck with a brand new car that has the airbags taped up for me to be able to see out my windows. I feel this is defiantly a warranty issue and I want it to be known and people be warn so hopefully this will not happen to their new accords. *tr
My daughter started the car, her husband got in & closed the right passenger door & the curtain air-bags on the right side of the vehicle deployed. The car is a leased 2008 honda accord sedan with approx 14,452 miles. I brought the car to coral springs honda, and was told that their investigative team had to look the car over. Their final statement is that the passenger "slammed" the door to hard and it caused the air-bags to deploy. It is pretty scary to think that this can happen if you should close your door to hard. They are also stating that it is my responsibility to have the car repaired. Please advise as to my legal rights. *tr
Also reported on the 2008 Honda Accord
Other brake problem
Other engine problem
Airbag inflator rupture
Premature brake pad or rotor wear
Other lighting problem
Excessive oil consumption
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 231 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.
Complaints are voluntary, so 231 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.
Questions this page answers
At what mileage does unclassified problem happen on the 2008 Honda Accord?
Across 126 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 75,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 45,000 miles and a quarter after 105,000 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is unclassified problem on the 2008 Honda Accord?
231 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 2.0 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.
What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars
Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed